GAD Program Ideas

Whitney Goldman

Health 3 – Nyaruguru District, Southern Province

As a Health volunteer in Rwanda, the world is your oyster.  While we are often paired with Health Centers and have official counterparts, our time is largely our own.  This is both a blessing and a curse as deciding on project ideas can be overwhelming.  There are potential projects and project partners everywhere. Not to mention that serving at a new post (Rwanda & site), it’s difficult to connect with existing PCV programs and projects. 

I think a good place to start with the Peace Corps Rwanda GAD blog is with the concrete.  As a committee, what information can we provide to make our meetings and ideas relevant to others serving in this beautiful country?  So today, I want to share some potential project ideas that PCVs can potentially implement at their sites.

1.  Work with your sector to add an education component to current SGBV punishments

Our site is close to the sector office and we have sector officials coming and going fairly often.  The Social Affairs person is part of the steering committee for the community health worker cooperative, the education secretary is working with an outside NGO to provide Mutuelle to primary school students.  Basically, we see the sector folks a lot.  Working with local officials is a great way to partner with community stakeholders outside your health center or school.  Realizing this, we came to think about how we could develop a partnership.  We started asking about things that we saw.

In our sector, the current punishment for any SGBV offender is a monetary one.  There is little incentive to report family members, as we live in a rural, impoverished area.  If you were a subsistence farmer with little to no income, would you report your spouse?

Ideally, we’d love to create a multi-pronged intervention including education across age and gender, behavior change communication, and law enforcement.  We know that a comprehensive approach is best.  However, by including an educational component to the current system, we can help illustrate a different method of dealing with SGBV offenders, and begin a discussion about how to integrate a more comprehensive approach.

2.  Integrate family planning services into general consultation at your local health center

For any number of reasons, women might not want others to know they have come to the health center to receive family planning services.  One way to secure confidentiality is to work with health center staff to provide family planning in the general consultation room.  This integration of services allows for discretion and may offer health center staff the opportunity to enroll women on the spot.  Speak with the health center director and head nurse of family planning to get the conversation started.  It’s a fairly simple process.  All you need to do is move the required forms to the consultation room and let your community know that a change has been made (Community Health Workers and village chiefs are great at spreading the word).

3.  Connect with community members that work on SGBV

There are many organizations that have worked / are working on SGBV in Rwanda.  Community members have been elected and trained in collaborating with the local government office on SGBV issues.  From my understanding, each village has 4 people working on SGBV in their community.  You can find out who these people are by asking the social affairs and civil service folks at your sector.  You can conduct a needs and assets assessment with members of each village.  What do they do?  What do they know?  What obstacles do they see?  How can you work together?  They are a great community-based resource and could benefit from both the soft and technical skills PCVs often possess. 

4.  Start a girls’ activity or club at your school

GLOW clubs, girls’ soccer games, dance groups, running clubs (you could bring your runners to the Kigali marathon) – the possibilities are endless!  Don’t forget about the Life Skills Manual, now in Kinyarwanda.  It’s a great resource with pre-made lesson plans spanning a range of topics including peer pressure, communication, HIV/AIDS, and sexual health.  There is a soft copy that many PCVs have and you can ask your program manager for a copy, too.  Don’t forget to ask around for other general club and activity ideas - people are doing some great things.

5.  Connect with initiatives happening in Rwanda 

Ask well-connected people about what’s happening in Rwanda.  It seems everyday there is a new program rolling out in our district.  Keep up-to-date by engaging other PCVs about their projects, asking PC staff (all of them) about programs they’ve heard about, independently researching budding NGOs in Rwanda.

i.e.: We just read about an awesome project helping women, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE).  They make feminine products from locally available materials and have an office in Kigali.  We’ve contacted the organization and are waiting to hear back.  I promise to let you know what we find out. 

6.  Work on an income generating activity (IGA) with a community group

Volunteers are implementing some great IGAs that you can easily replicate at your site.  Animal husbandry projects with cows, rabbits, or chickens, for example.  At our site, we’re processing soymilk to sell at the local market with a youth club. SPA grants are a great way to cover start-up costs and are straightforward to apply for.  Plus, the money usually arrives sooner than with other grants available to PCVs.  Reliable sources of income are often difficult to find in areas with limited work opportunities.  Even a small IGA can allow the beneficiaries to pay for things such as health insurance, school fees, and nutritious foods.

7.  Invite an organization to do a training at your work-site regarding appropriate work relationships and sexual harassment

GIZ (a German NGO working in Rwanda) has some resources available and Rwandan facilitators trained to discuss this topic.  It could be a great secondary project or a way to kick off a larger SGBV program.

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This is just a sampling of a long list of ideas.  Be sure to check in with your favorite GAD representative about new project ideas as we move along.  There is a GAD manual currently in development that we hope to be able to share with you soon.  We’re here to be a resource for you!

Whitney